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Tecmo and Bungie Studios announced today that they have teamed up to bring Halo's Spartan-458 as an unlockable playable character in the X360 launch title Dead or Alive 4. Along with the new character, the two development teams are also introducing a Halo-inspired environment as an unlockable fighting stage in Dead or Alive 4.

The idea for the collaboration began about two years ago when the heads of both teams, Bungie’s Pete Parsons and Team NINJA’s Tomonobu Itagaki, met at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Both are huge fans of their respective studios’ work and thought it would be a great idea to team up on a future project. What better way to do so than to introduce a hidden character from “Halo” in the next generation world of Dead or Alive 4 on the Xbox 360 system?

“The opportunity to work with Team Ninja and combine our powers to strike yet another blow in our quest for world domination, was too alluring to pass up,” said Pete Parsons, Studios Manager at Bungie Studios, during a Game Informer interview in their January issue. “Plus, we just think the idea of putting a Spartan into a DOA game totally kicks ass.”

Team NINJA’s outspoken head producer, Itagaki, commented on how the two very distinct worlds can co-exist in Dead or Alive 4 , “Our first priority was, above all else, is to remain truthful to Bungie’s original design and background material. Then, ideally we were able to add a bit of Team NINJA’s distinctive flavor on top,” he said. “Think about it for a second: do you honestly believe there is anything out there that can’t be accomplished with the technologies of Bungie and Team NINJA put together?”